More Matthew McConaughey completism after a sneaky rewatch of The Lincoln Lawyer (2011). He has a very small role here; Chris Cooper leads. John Sayles wrote and directed.
This struck me as some kind of Texan version of Tracy Letts's August: Osage County (2007) (Cooper is in the movie of that). It's got a dash of the Touch of Evil (1958) borderlands: whose land is it anyway, when the indigenous, Latinos and whites have all lived in Rio County, Texas for ages anyway? Perhaps they can agree that it ain't the Spanish's. There's some fabulously-shot shifts in time between the parental generation and Sheriff Cooper's who's doing his best to avoid drawing the movie-obvious conclusion that his father did not do it. The auxiliary shenanigans at a nearby army base centred on Joe Morton (Terminator 2 (1991)) were dispensable. Frances McDormand has a small scene as Cooper's ex-wife. Elizabeth Peña looks so lovelorn.
The whole thing is a bit clunky and every scene is mostly predictable. The ending upsets the applecart by brushing off the implications of incest.
Roger Ebert: four stars. Janet Maslin.
